The CIA waterboarded 9/11 al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times in March 2003, and fellow Al Qaeda commander Abu Zubayda at least 83 times in August 2002. Waterboarding was also used on a third al Qaeda detainee named Nashiri.

Now, as  former President George W. Bush launches his new book Decision Points with interviews on network and cable TV shows, including NBC and Fox News, he has said publicly what most people assumed was the case all along. Bush personally authorized the CIA to use waterboarding on these monsters. As a result, they gave up life-saving intelligence that we would not likely have obtained in time through less stressful means.

Bush explained that he first consulted with his legal advisers, who told him that the use of waterboarding as contemplated by the CIA was not illegal under the exigent circumstances that the country was then facing. Relying on such advice, he gave the CIA the green light to use waterboarding on just three high-level al Qaeda detainees.

As Bush explained:

Three people were waterboarded and I believe that decision saved lives.

Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American military and diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States. Using those techniques saved lives

Predictably, nitwits on the Left are calling for George Bush’s head – literally. They are continuing their campaign to have Bush arrested for simply doing his duty to protect American lives from the imminent threat of another savage invasion of our homeland.

In his initial interrogation by CIA officers, according to former CIA Director George Tenet, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had defiantly told them, “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer.” Waterboarding changed his mind.

Here’s how former CIA operative John Kiriakoua described this so-called torture (which, as carried out by the CIA, it was not), lauding the positive effect waterboarding  had on another of al-Qaeda’s most notorious terrorists:

Abu Zubayda was wholly uncooperative for weeks and refused to answer questions. That’s when the CIA decided to waterboard him. Waterboarding [which is designed to emulate the sensation of drowning] begins by placing a suspect on a table with the suspect’s feet slightly elevated. Once a suspect is secured on the table, interrogators wrap his face in a cellophane-like material….There is a bladder, or a water source, above the head with water pouring down on the mouth, so no water is going into your mouth, but it induces a gag reflex and makes you feel like you’re choking.

After only 35 seconds, Zubayda broke. From that day on, he answered every question. He said that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate because it would make it easier on the other brothers who had been captured. The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.

If even one American life was saved by waterboarding, it was worth it.

Those so-called liberals who are willing to permit innocent people to be maimed or killed, out of concern for making some al Qaeda leaders briefly uncomfortable and afraid for their lives, are beneath contempt.

In fact, for every innocent life that could have been saved but for the Left’s pressure to stop the use of such techniques, the Leftist obstructionists are morally culpable as accessories to murder and crimes against humanity.

Joseph Klein is the author of a new book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam

God in Heaven, the Brits have gone so wobbly.  The Times UK online just published a piece based upon a BBC interview with former Bush Administration Senior Advisor Karl Rove (pictured above). Rove asserted that the water-boarding of three terrorists, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was justified.  Of course, in the Left Wing’s new lexicon water-boarding is now called torture. And the Times pointed out that Rove said he is proud of the Bush administration for OKing it. He told the BBC that history will judge Bush kindly for the invasion of Iraq.

The Times says that the water-boarding practice “was one of the most controversial acts of the war against terrorism”.  Really?  Is that so?  What about scenes like this?  Remember the two American GIs who were kidnapped, tortured, butchered, disemboweled and beheaded by terrorists in Iraq?  How about the American contractors who were burned and hung up on that bridge?  The BBC and The Times UK editorial staff can’t recall those items now?  Or is it that, in the interests of enabling England’s ongoing Islamization, none of the above is particularly bothersome to The Times UK?  But pouring water onto a terrorist’s face and into his nose in order to find out where the next attack is coming is “controversial”

Read the entire story here:

“George W Bush’s former top adviser has said he is “proud” of the use of harsh interrogation techniques – including waterboarding – during the War on Terror.

Karl Rove, the Republican strategist widely known as “Bush’s Brain”, said in a BBC interview that he did not believe waterboarding, or simulated drowning, amounted to torture.

“I’m proud that we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists and gave us valuable information that allowed us to foil plots such as flying aeroplanes into Heathrow and into London, bringing down aircraft over the Pacific, flying an aeroplane into the tallest building in Los Angeles and other plots,” Mr Rove told the BBC…

… The practice of waterboarding – effectively sanctioned by a series of legal memos from the White House in 2002 – was one of the most controversial aspects of the war against terrorism…”

And of course, The Times UK had to tell us that Barack Obama has forbidden the waterboarding technique.  Oh thank Heaven above for Obama’s humanitarian treatment of the Soldiers of Allah who are captured.  I feel so much safer now, knowing that Eric Holder and his Department of Justice will Mirandize and lawyer-up any more Muslim jihadists who get caught trying to kill either American soldiers and Marines on foreign battle fields, or my family here at home.

I have my own set of issues with the Bush administration for its abject refusal to face the realities of Islamic doctrine, and for its close ties to Saudi Arabia’s royal family.  But I do not have any problem with pouring cold water into some jihadist’s nose to get information that will save American and British citizens’ lives.  Perhaps the British press has forgotten how this particular enemy operates.  Or perhaps they believe that by printing stories like this they will gain favor with their ever-increasing Muslim population, and somehow avert Sharia in England.  Good luck with that.

In a parting thought, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has recently been under investigation by the Chilcot Inquiry, is probably thankful for Rove’s statements.  Blair could use a little support right now.  The trembling British Press and the English Left have branded him a murderer and liar for leading England to war in Iraq.

Behold a traitor to his country, American millionaire businessman Grover Norquist.  If you did not see Jamie Glazov’s interview with author and AtlasShrugs blogger Pamela Geller in Front Page Magazine yesterday, you must go back and read it.  If you ever wondered, as I did many times, why George W. Bush told us for eight years that Islam is a religion of peace, and you could not figure out why The President of The United States of America could not see what was plainly in front of all of our eyes, look at the photo above.  There’s your answer.

This is the man who counseled Bush following the 9/11 attacks and introduced some of the most treacherous apologists for Islam to our Commander In Chief.  This is the man who vouched for them and assured Bush that they would be trustworthy advisors on Muslim matters.  This is the man who single-handedly mis-led America’s CIC and thereby an entire country into the talons of them who shook hands with Bush, as their associates were stabbing our nation in the back with the dagger of jihad.  This is the man who enabled the infiltration of the White House, The Pentagon, and the upper echelons of our Armed Forces by jihad-sympathetic Muslims.  This is a villain, in the most abject sense of the word.

It is a lengthy interview.  Please take the time to read all of it here:

…Geller: I think CPAC’s agenda in 2010, as well as 2009 and before that, reflects the influence of Grover Norquist, the conservative powerhouse and kingmaker. He is a board member of the ACU, and from the looks of CPAC’s covered topics and omission of discussion of jihad, it looks as if he exerts enormous influence over David Keene, the ACU’s nominal leader. Norquist and his ally Suhail Khan seem to be in charge at CPAC — no CPAC event goes on that doesn’t reflect their perspective….

… Jamie, Grover Norquist’s troubling ties to Islamic supremacists and jihadists have been known for years. He and his Palestinian wife, Samah Alrayyes, who was director of communications for his Islamic Free Market Institute until they married in 2005, are very active in “Muslim outreach.” Just six weeks after 9/11, The New Republic ran an expose explaining how Norquist arranged for George W. Bush to meet with fifteen Islamic supremacists at the White House on September 26, 2001 — to show how Muslims rejected terrorism…

… It was Norquist who ushered these silver-tongued jihadists into the Oval Office after the worst attack ever on American soil. Don’t you think that the likes of Ibn Warraq, Bat Ye’or, and Wafa Sultan should have been advising the President instead of Hamas, Hizballah and the Muslim Brotherhood? But that wasn’t to be. So at that September 26 meeting Bush declared that “the teachings of Islam are teachings of peace and good.” It was a critically important, historic moment. What should have been the most important teaching moment of the long war became a propaganda tool for Islam. A singular historic opportunity was squandered, and the harm that has resulted is incalculable…”

If you want the straight answers about why we’re in the mess we are in, please click on the link above and read the entire interview.  Pamela Geller is a straight shooter.  I’ll vouch for her.

Lori Ziganto at iowntheworld

It seems as if someone in Minnesota is is feeling that whole absence makes the heart grow fonder thing. Or else they, you know, realize that Obama is a huge failure. Now, if only Minnesota would apologize for that whole Al Franken deal.

Of course, some immediately tried to claim the billboard, featuring President Bush and the words “Miss Me Yet”, was an internet hoax and some sort of photo shop. See, because George Bush is evil and all. NPR reports that it’s not!

But our friend Bob Collins at Minnesota Public Radio assures us he’s seen it with his own eyes:

There is a billboard along I-35 near Wyoming, Minn., with a huge photo of former president George W. Bush and this question: “Miss Me Yet?”

Now, the push is on to find out who paid to have it put up.

Bob says there’s no readily apparent claim of ownership on the billboard, so he’s heading back to the scene to see if he can find out who’s behind the message. He’s also got some local politicos looking into it. He’ll keep us posted.

Man, I miss that little smirky grin. Too bad Obama didn’t “inherit” that, instead of the lame “I’m super serious” face and nanny finger wagging.

Read full article here

John Lennon

For the Previous Parts of the Series:

Alinsky, Beck, Satan and Me: Part I

Hell on Earth: Alinsky, Beck, Satan and Me, Part II

Boring From Within: Alinsky, Beck, Satan and Me, Part III

To Have And Have Not: Alinsky, Beck, Satan and Me, Part IV

Post-modern leftism: Alinsky, Beck, Satan and Me, Part V

The wisest thing Lennon (John, not Vladimir) said about revolutionaries was a line in the song which declared (sort of) his parting of the ways with them: “You say you want a revolution, well, you know, we’d all like to see your plan.” Lennon went on to say that radicals could count him out if they were preaching hate. (But then, the Beatles caved and changed the lyric so that it said both “you can count me out — in.” Well, who in in his right mind over the age of 30 looks for wisdom about reconstructing society to an art form in which “singing doo wah diddie diddie doo wah do” is regarded as genius? But don’t get me wrong, I love this stuff).

We’d all like to see your plan. Yes indeed we would.

The fact is that revolutionaries beginning with Rousseau and Robespierre and Marx have never had a plan. The ones who did and tried to build little utopian communities failed. But the really serious revolutionaries, the ones prepared to burn down the system and put their opponents up against the wall, they never have a plan. What they have is a vague idea of the heaven they propose to create on earth — in Marx’s case “the kingdom of freedom,” in Alinsky‘s “the open society” — which is sentimental and seductive enough to persuade their followers that it’s alright to commit mayhem and murder — usually in epic doses — to bring it about. Otherwise, revolutionaries never give two seconds to the problem of how to make a new society work. How to keep people from committing crimes against each other (the Alinsky answer: capitalism makes them criminals), and how to get people to actually work, to produce. From Marx to Mao to Castro, revolutionaries have never had a clue. (Their excuse for the monstrous poverty and human suffering they create? — the capitalists are responsible, it’s the U.S. embargo.)

So if there is no plan, the devil is in the detail of the methods you use to get there. Each step of the way constitutes another block in the foundations of the world you are creating. The means tell you what the ends will be.

Alinsky’s biographer with the following anecdote about Alinsky’s advice to students wishing to protest the appearance on their campus of the first George Bush, before he became president, because he was America’s representative to the UN during the Vietnam War:

“College student activists in the 1960s and 1970s sought out Alinsky for advice about tactics and strategy. On one such occasion in the spring of 1972 at Tulane University’s annual week-long series of events featuring leading public figures, students asked Alinsky to help plan a protest of a scheduled speech by George Bush, then U.S. representative to the United Nations, a speech likely to be a defense of the Nixon Administration’s Vietnam War policies [Note: the Nixon Administration was then negotiating with the North Vietnamese communists to arrive at a peace agreement-- DH] The students told Alinsky that they were thinking about picketing or disrupting Bush’s address. That’s the wrong approach, he rejoined — not very creative and besides, causing a disruption might get them thrown out of school. [Not likely -- DH.]

“He told them, instead, to go hear the speech dressed up as members of the Ku Klux Klan, and whenever Bush said something in defense of the Vietnam War, they should cheer and wave placards, reading ‘The K.K.K. supports Bush.’ And that is what the students did with very successful, attention-getting results.” (Let Them Call Me Rebel, pp. xv-xvi)

This anecdote tells you everything you really need to know about this mentor to Hillary Clinton and the Obamas, and the ACORN radicals. Lenin once said that purpose of a political argument is not to refute your opponent “but to wipe him from the face of the earth.” The mission of Alinsky radicals is a mission of destruction. It doesn’t matter that the Vietnam war was not a race war — that millions of South Vietnamese were against the Communists, that the South was eventually conquered by North Vietnamese armies because the Viet Cong failed to win the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people. It doesn’t matter who George Bush actuually is or what he believes. Because your purpose is to erase him and the system he is alleged to represent. Therefore pick the symbol of the greatest evil that Americans — a small minority of Americans — were ever associated with, and use it to obliterate everything good they ever did in the service of your cause, which is to destroy the system which created them. If America’s cause in Vietnam is the Ku Klux Klan, it is evil and America is evil. If George Bush is the Ku Klux Klan, that’s it. Nobody needs to listen to him, he is non-person, a symbol of evil. Inside every radical is a Manichean at war with the forces of darkness and evil. In such war every means is justified, as we shall see. (To be continued…)

Part 7: Means and Ends, Continued

]]> http://www.newsrealblog.com/2009/08/21/means-and-ends-alinsky-beck-satan-and-me-part-vi/feed/ 38